Jason Lutes Jeremy Strandberg Hey, so I’m wanting to make an almanac that looks fancy like in the book for printout and bragging rights. What fonts did you use? And what program would you recommend for formatting it? I think it would be great if I could throw together a template that me (and others) can just punch info into.
More specifically, I want to combine the formats of the abbreviated as well as the detailed almanac so I have the detail of the second almanac example but in a more complete nested style of the first.
I.E. Region->Area->Steading-> Site
With the Region, the area having spaces for more detailed discoveries (such as sites) like in the detailed almanac entry, with all the levels intact.
For example, here’s some info for my current Perilous Wilds/ Dungeon World game.
Twofalls -Region
Tags: Temperate, Wild, Grassland, Unsafe
Twofalls is a medium-sized island, roughly 10 miles wide and 25 miles across. It is so named for its two waterfalls that fountain over each of its sides, cascading down from the river and
Impressions:
• The unbroken spread of fluffy white cloud overhead, close enough you feel you could reach out and touch it.
• Orange rays of sunlight playing out lazily over your surroundings
• A feeling of weightlessness as you look out from the island at the heavens around it.
• The shapes of hundreds of birds moving among the clouds.
• SUMMER: The stifling heat of the sun, burning away the cloud cover, but not banishing the wind.
• FALL: Grass aged into hues of orange, brown, and red as they turn for the winter.
• WINTER: Frigid air kept at bay by the warmth of the cloud-dimmed sun.
• SPRING: Deep greens and bright reds turn the landscape vividly bright.
Discoveries:
Dangers:
Within the region, I have an area:
The Still Moor-Area
Tags: Grassland, Rolling Hills, Safe
A tract of uncultivated grassland making up the majority of Twofalls, broken only by the natural curves of the hills.
Impressions:
• A cool, dry, wind sweeping the grasses into waves of emerald.
• A gentle isolation strengthened by the utter stillness of the wide-open flats
• The burble of a stream at the edge of hearing.
Questions:
• What protects this place from danger?
• What do they say about the sound of the wind in the grass?
• What do you know about this place after growing up in this area?
• Why is this place beautiful?
Within the area, I have sites and steadings.
The Shattered Fountain-Site
(Coming Soon)
Peroval- Steading
Human Town, Safe, Civilized, Moderate, Steady, Watch, Power (Divine), Religion (Ilmater), Trade(NewFlower)
Sorry for the long-windedness, but I hope that all makes sense.
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Hi Harrison s,
Happy to hear you’re making use of the format! My intention was for it to be modular and adaptable to individual GM needs, so go to town.
I use InDesign for layout stuff. Here’s a folder with a truncated .indd file of the Perilous Almanacs book, along with the almanac included in the Perilous Wilds (which uses a different header font):
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vbki91e5t5jtydb/AABLaccwm3SG-7XfkFRZkV4Ra?dl=0
The gothic-looking display type in TPW is Traditio AH, and the display type on Perilous Almanacs is League Gothic.
The body type in both books is my beloved Oldstyle (regular, italic, and smallcaps) courtesy of the typophiles at the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. The free versions of their stuff online is of questionable legitimacy, and they do truly amazing work, so I recommend kicking them $20 for their font pack:
http://store.cthulhulives.org/collections/games-props/products/hplhs-fonts
The only weird thing about the layout is that because Oldstyle does not have a bold version, I faux-bolded it when needed by adding a .2-point stroke in InDesign. On some digital devices this makes the bolded type harder to read, but it prints fine.
Let me know if you have any more questions!
Jason Lutes Huh, didn’t realize how involved something like that was. Thanks for all the info. .indd is an InDesign format, correct?
Correct. You could just put something together in whatever program you prefer, and as long as the basic format and fonts are similar, you’ll probably be fine.
The easiest approach might be a form fillable pdf… I’d do it but I need to find time, which won’t be soon…
A while ago I started work on some CSS and XML for producing almanac style documents (mostly because I found InDesign to be horribly unintuitive). I’ve rather stalled on that project due to other priorities coming up. I plan to get back to it eventually, but I was browsing back through this community when I stumbled across this post and was reminded of it.
I’ve put it up on GitHub — https://github.com/dorward/dungeon-world-almanac — if anybody would like to play with it before I get around to finishing it off. Pull requests would be very welcome if anybody wants to do any more work on it!